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Rethinking border walls as fluid meshworks
journal contribution
posted on 2023-10-23, 23:43 authored by Umut OzgucWe tend to see border walls as stable concrete fortifications. This article seeks to offer an alternative understanding of walls by suggesting a shift in border studies from network thinking to meshwork thinking. Despite references to multiplicity, concepts of networks and assemblages in border studies continue to provide neat narratives of walls. This article reimagines the border beyond sovereign–disciplinary–biopolitical networks and assemblages. It argues that border walls are constituted by and constitutive of the ever-shifting transformative movements of lines: colonizing lines, crack lines and lines of flight. By tracing the lines of the Separation Wall in the West Bank, this article reveals that, on the border, all these lines coexist, entangle with one another, and in their entanglements, they alter each other to form a fluid meshwork. Meshwork thinking shows the constant mobility of the border and shifts our attention to the power of molecular movements beneath the state in creating, sustaining and disrupting power politics. By presenting a less state-centric, more complex picture of the Separation Wall, this article aims to highlight the movement of the lines that transform the border into a meshwork.
History
Journal
Security DialogueVolume
52Pagination
287 - 305Location
Thousand Oaks, CAPublisher DOI
ISSN
0967-0106eISSN
1460-3640Language
engPublication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2020, The AuthorUsage metrics
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